OVCHARENKO presents Alexey Kallima's exhibition "Soot and Clay," the culmination of the artist's long-standing exploration of materiality. Charcoal and sanguine, which Kallima has worked with for decades, have become his signature language. An ascetic palette, ranging fr om black to earth tones, reveals a dialogue between the ephemeral and the eternal.

The new series was created at his residence in Sochi. The distance from the city allowed Kallima to rethink the material: here, it becomes not an object, but a participant in the process. The work "Black Gutter" (2025), like other canvases, demonstrates a focus on the physical properties of coal—its flowability, gradations of tone, and ability to hold the energy of a gesture.

As the artist notes: "My new album consists of images of the sea surface, reduced to a composition without shore or horizon. This rejection of accompanying signs and symbols, which generate an excessive sea of ​​interpretations. The painting either overwhelms the viewer with a condensed individuality or draws them into the rarefied surface of the sea.

Living by the sea, Kallima transforms natural motifs into formal structures. In "Black Trench," one can discern the rhythm of waves; in "Three Stripes," the stratification of the shore; in "Line," the graphic quality of sea ripples. These aren't landscapes, but their internal energies, translated into gestural language.

"Soot and Clay is the recursive self-designation of my works," says Kallima. "It's a return of shimmering allegories to the space of truthful materiality. Proto-elements from which everything is created and into which humanity transforms our corner of paradise. For me, this is an attempt, using soot and clay, to transform myself into the surface of the sea through geometry and alchemy."

The Sochi residence became a laboratory wh ere the artist experimented with scale without regard for context. The two-meter canvases demand not just the gaze, but physical engagement. Material is the protagonist here: charcoal stripes serve as a metaphor for cyclical time, while clay alludes to the birth of form.

The central work is the fresco "A Million Reasons." According to Kallima, it is inspired by the desire "to go beyond objectivity and materiality. It is something that cannot be carried away. A work not for one, but for everyone."

Kallima invites us to slow down and examine matter. In the age of digital simulacra, his practice reminds us: art begins with a hand touching a material, with a gesture that leaves a trace.

About the artist

Alexey Kallima is one of the key Russian artists of his generation. The OVCHARENKO Gallery has hosted his landmark solo exhibitions: "Gray Everyday Life." Vivid Dreams (2013), Auditorium (2015), the large-scale painting installation Psi (2016), and the project Postman Under Whom the Bridge Collapsed (2025). Kallima was born in Grozny (1969) and graduated from the Krasnodar Art College. In the late 1990s, he moved to Moscow, became involved with the Radek group, and became a curator at the legendary France Gallery. For his work Terek vs. Chelsea (a fantasy match painted with paints visible only under ultraviolet light), the artist received the Innovation Prize (2005). In the 2010s, Kallima turned to the poetics of the urban environment: monochrome charcoal and sanguine drawings gave way to vibrant compositions featuring window views, city overpasses, and car tracks in the snow. His works are in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and his installation "Sorry, the exhibition opening has been postponed due to technical reasons" was shown at the Louvre in 2010. The artist has participated in the Venice Biennale (1995, 2009) and Manifesta 10 (2014).

Alexey Kallima
SOOT AND CLAY
March 4 – April 12
Hours: Daily from 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM
Address: VLADEY Space, 4th Syromyatnichesky Lane, 1/8c
Free admission